Collaborating with PAX Labs, Vanity Fair has produced a docuseries that looks at 100 years of this country’s war on drugs. How it’s been used to drive unjust incarceration and racial inequality.
The docuseries hopes to educate and impact social change by highlighting the devastation this country has inflicted on our communities.
The series will focus on the origins of racism hiding behind the alleged drug war. It reports on how U.S. drug policy has defined the carceral system from as far back as the 1900s to this day.
And they are not the only ones putting a so-called drug war under a microscope.
The largest legal cannabis company in the world, Curaleaf, announced the launch of a cross-country fundraising platform. It’s linked to the company’s Strategic Social Partnerships initiative and its Corporate Social Responsibility “Rooted in Good” program. The company plans to use brands, suppliers and ancillary businesses embedded in communities impacted by the war on drugs.
Curaleaf is deeply concerned about the unbalanced war on drugs which is a war on our communities. Our lives have been ravaged as much by the use of drugs as it has the laws to combat them.
The criminal justice system happily fills penitentiaries with our brothas and sistas. Many for lame offenses like personal use. BIPOCs are thirteen times more likely to get jammed up for nonviolent substance offenses than whites. Addicts in our communities get punished more severely than ones outside our communities.
This bullshit has been prevalent since the 1970s. At the time, President Richard Nixon put drugs on notice. (Nixon hung out with full-blow addicts like Elvis Presley and freely used the N-word behind closed doors.) Between Nixon and Nelson Rockefeller — a wealthy white man who pounded the pavement for tougher drug laws — the 70s saw the most outrageous disparity in drug arrests.
Today, people of color are six times more likely to get cuffed for drug crimes than whites. In 2016, BPOCs counted for 67% of the incarcerated. This despite the fact we made up only 37% of the population.
Vanity Fair’s docuseries starts with a look at the war on race. The second and third parts report on, respectively, the collateral consequences of the war and if there’s any way to get out.
And the beat goes on…
It hurts to say we may have a long fight ahead of us. Legalization of weed is a huge step to winning our war. Reform is a-coming. Over 50% of the country has no problem with legal weed. It’s the politicos and the poleese and the GOP who continue to stall. Who refuses to see the forest for the weed.
Right now we’re all in this war. Curaleaf and Vanity Fair and PAX Labs have joined it. This website’s long been in the war.
The war on drugs is a war on us. Our fight is a war on racism. Legalized cannabis is on our frontline. Once that trigger’s pulled, at least they won’t have that noose swinging from the tree.
This is a war we all have to fight
